IBM Case Studies Leading children’s hospital shares its recipe for an enterprise imaging strategy

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	Leading children’s hospital shares its recipe for an enterprise imaging strategy IBM

Leading children’s hospital shares its recipe for an enterprise imaging strategy

IBM

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries	Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions	Maintenance Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Predictive Maintenance Remote Asset Management
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) was facing several challenges with its imaging strategy. The hospital had limited long-term image storage for its contingency system and lacked a true disaster recovery process for full-fidelity images. Additionally, there was no documentation for ultrasound studies, which prevented the hospital from billing for imaging procedures. The hospital was also looking to expand its image storage beyond radiology and cardiology to include images from across all 'ologies. However, such a complicated change required a deliberate and careful process to ensure that images were not misplaced or inaccessible. Read More
About Customer	Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) is a nonprofit, 600-bed academic medical center that was established in 1883. It is one of the oldest and most distinguished pediatric hospitals in the United States. The hospital provides comprehensive clinical services, from treatment of rare and complex conditions to well-child care. CCHMC serves 1.2 million patients and is consistently ranked among the best children's hospitals in the U.S. The hospital attracts patients from all 50 states and across the world, and also has a dedication to clinical research. Read More
Solution	CCHMC implemented Merge's iConnect® Enterprise Archive, iConnect® Access, and Merge PACS™ to address its challenges. The iConnect Enterprise Archive provided long-term image storage beyond radiology, including cardiology. It also allowed referring providers to submit images through the intelligent DICOM pathway to be automatically archived. The hospital also implemented a true business continuance with disaster recovery. The hospital now has replicated hardware at an off-site disaster recovery data center, which has the same hardware configuration as the production environment. Everything on the production enterprise archive is automatically reconciled with the disaster recovery site, offering true business continuance in exceptional situations. Merge PACS offers an integrated mode that communicates exclusively with the enterprise archive for images. Whenever the hospital switches over to the contingency server, the exact full dataset of studies will be replicated. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services

Applicable Industries

Healthcare & Hospitals

Applicable Functions

Maintenance

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance

Remote Asset Management

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) was facing several challenges with its imaging strategy. The hospital had limited long-term image storage for its contingency system and lacked a true disaster recovery process for full-fidelity images. Additionally, there was no documentation for ultrasound studies, which prevented the hospital from billing for imaging procedures. The hospital was also looking to expand its image storage beyond radiology and cardiology to include images from across all 'ologies. However, such a complicated change required a deliberate and careful process to ensure that images were not misplaced or inaccessible.

About Customer

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) is a nonprofit, 600-bed academic medical center that was established in 1883. It is one of the oldest and most distinguished pediatric hospitals in the United States. The hospital provides comprehensive clinical services, from treatment of rare and complex conditions to well-child care. CCHMC serves 1.2 million patients and is consistently ranked among the best children's hospitals in the U.S. The hospital attracts patients from all 50 states and across the world, and also has a dedication to clinical research.

Solution

CCHMC implemented Merge's iConnect® Enterprise Archive, iConnect® Access, and Merge PACS™ to address its challenges. The iConnect Enterprise Archive provided long-term image storage beyond radiology, including cardiology. It also allowed referring providers to submit images through the intelligent DICOM pathway to be automatically archived. The hospital also implemented a true business continuance with disaster recovery. The hospital now has replicated hardware at an off-site disaster recovery data center, which has the same hardware configuration as the production environment. Everything on the production enterprise archive is automatically reconciled with the disaster recovery site, offering true business continuance in exceptional situations. Merge PACS offers an integrated mode that communicates exclusively with the enterprise archive for images. Whenever the hospital switches over to the contingency server, the exact full dataset of studies will be replicated.

Impact #1	The hospital now has true disaster recovery for full-fidelity images.
Impact #2	The hospital has expanded its long-term image storage beyond radiology to include cardiology and is planning to add more departments.
Impact #3	The hospital can now document and bill for ultrasound studies that were previously not order-driven.

Impact #1

The hospital now has true disaster recovery for full-fidelity images.

Impact #2

The hospital has expanded its long-term image storage beyond radiology to include cardiology and is planning to add more departments.

Impact #3

The hospital can now document and bill for ultrasound studies that were previously not order-driven.

Benefit #1	The hospital now has the ability to conduct policy-based deletion of images.
Benefit #2	The hospital imports more than 30,000 studies from outside centers each year.

Benefit #1

The hospital now has the ability to conduct policy-based deletion of images.

Benefit #2

The hospital imports more than 30,000 studies from outside centers each year.

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Overview

Leading children’s hospital shares its recipe for an enterprise imaging strategy

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit